Monday, October 20, 2014

Climate studies show that extreme
rainfall events would increase over the Indian subcontinent and that the
Himalayan range is vulnerable. Despite these predictions, the Himalayan states
are unprepared for such climate eventualities.

I left Srinagar a week before the floods. Passing by
the Zero Kadal, Srinagar’s oldest bridge across
the Jhelum I had remarked that the river was
reduced to a nallah and if this was its appearance in the monsoon season, the
health of the river was grim. Then within days the waters swelled and the Jhelum burst its banks.

Similar floods had hit Uttarakhand
a year ago, in June 2013, centered around the Kedar Valley,
involving the Alaknanda and Mandakini rivers. Heavy rain followed by flash
floods caused large-scale destruction of life and property. The sad part is
that in the truest sense of the expression, the disasters in Kedarnath and Kashmir were man-made. The combined effects of utter
administrative failure and human greed enabling rampant, unauthorised
construction across natural water channels and flood plains resulted in the
devastation we saw in both places. Climate change is causing more and more
extreme weather events like sudden storms and cyclones as well as cloudbursts
accompanied by torrential rain and floods, but governments can prepare for
these. People can be evacuated in time, relief and rescue can be planned ahead,
preparations can be made to ensure availability of drinking water, food
rations, medicines and clothing. All this was done by the Orissa government in
preparation for Cyclone Phailin that struck the state in October 2013 so the impact
of the cyclone was contained.

It’s not as though there have not
been sufficient warnings about the potential for flooding in the Kashmir Valley. The Indian National Trust for
Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) in Jammu and Kashmir
had noted in 2009 that construction in the low-lying areas of Srinagar,
especially along the banks of the Jhelum, had
blocked the discharge channels of the river. The INTACH report predicted that
natural disasters in the Kashmir
Valley could cause
widespread devastation. Recommendations for action to mitigate the danger were
submitted to the government but nothing happened.

In 2010, a study done by the
Jammu and Kashmir Flood Control Department predicted a major flood that would
inundate Srinagar.
The government ignored the warnings of the experts because the concerned
minister considered the prediction of a flood in the Jhelum
needlessly alarmist. Such a position can only stem from ignorance about the Kashmir region where floods have been a recurrent feature
for at least a 100 years. Praveen Swami has traced the history of flooding in Srinagar in his article in a newspaper and shown how
floods have regularly visited Srinagar
since 1893. Unfortunately, the lessons of earlier disasters did not make a
sufficient impression on successive governments for them to do anything to
protect their beautiful city and its people. In 2012, the Jammu
and Kashmir office of the National Disaster Management Authority
(NDMA) again predicted that massive flooding in Jammu and Kashmir was a distinct
possibility. To this too, there was no administrative response.

Construction continues unabated.
Despite expert advice, hydropower stations are being built without any
evaluation of vulnerability and disaster potential. The hydro power projects on
the Jhelum in Ganderbal and on the Chenab in
Sach Khas are both examples of haphazard construction. Uttarakhand has gone the
same way and suffered for it. Some 70 hydro power projects are planned on the
Alaknanda and Mandakini rivers. If these projects go ahead, further disasters
are likely.

Granted that hindsight is always
20/20 and everyone is cleverer after the event but the warnings about flooding
in the Kashmir Valley have been many and government
response has not been visible. Given the heavy and sustained rains this time,
flooding was perhaps inevitable but the level of devastation was not. Three
days before Srinagar was flooded, the Jhelum in Anantnag had already risen alarmingly high.
High enough to warn the state administration of impending trouble in Srinagar and yet the
government did not act to prepare the city for the coming floods and
inundation.

Shockingly Jammu and Kashmir is the only state in the
country that does not have monitoring centres to warn about rising levels in
the rivers and lakes that dot this flood-prone region. A Central government
proposal to set up flood monitoring stations has been pending for more than
five years without the state government taking any action. The Jhelum is boxed in by urban settlements and the lakes
into which excess water drains are very close to towns so there is little lead
time to prepare for floods. All the more reason that a well-coordinated,
efficient flood monitoring system was put in place.

Partisan politics has contributed
its share to the misery in Kashmir. The
state’s NDMA which should have been preparing for and managing the disaster,
was rendered defunct because the Modi government had secured the resignation of
eight members of the NDMA, including the chairperson because they had been
appointed by the earlier United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. This has
cost the people of Kashmir hugely.

Climate studies clearly show that
extreme rainfall events would increase over the Indian subcontinent and that
the Himalayan range is particularly vulnerable. Despite these predictions, the
Himalayan states are unprepared for such climate eventualities. We saw this in
Uttarakhand in 2013 and now in Kashmir in
2014. Climate preparedness has to become an important part of all development
planning, particularly in the susceptible mountain and coastal areas.

Political leaders and the
bureaucratic machinery must be educated about climate change and its disaster
potential. The lessons of Kedarnath and Kashmir
are evident and they must be taken to heart by planners in the Central and
state governments. There must be a comprehensive review of the development path
that the country has set itself on. There will have to be radical changes in
the philosophy of “growth at all costs” to ensure that the ecology is not destroyed
beyond redemption. Nature has a way of hitting back when pushed beyond a point.
We finally have to acknowledge that our planet has limits which must be
respected if people want a secure existence.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Agbiotechnology is presented in many forms — the
most common being that it will solve world hunger. To reinforce this claim,
there is an interesting word play at work. Agbiotechnology is referred to as
the ‘Evergreen Revolution’ or the 'Gene Revolution' but never genetic
engineering, which is its correct name. Both Evergreen Revolution and Gene
Revolution are deliberately coined terms which attempt to link Agbiotech with
the Green Revolution. In the view of most political leaders and policymakers,
the Green Revolution was a very positive happening that brought benefits in the
form of high food production but more importantly, freedom from food imports
and hence political and national sovereignty.

The
Green Revolution did in fact increase food production, principally the
production of rice and wheat. It made India independent of food imports
and firmed up its political spine. It ensured surplus grain that could be stored
in buffer stocks to be rushed where need arose and it tried to ensure that
famines were not anymore a feature of the Indian reality.

These
gains were so visible that the downside, the unequal distribution of the
benefits, of land and water degradation, the accompanying loss of genetic
diversity and the persisting endemic hunger and poverty, could not take the
shine off the Green Revolution. Because of this positive image, the promoters
of Agbiotech draw semantic parallels, invoking the earlier agricultural
revolution.

The
subliminal message that the spinmeisters of the Agbiotecg sector try to convey
is: If the Green Revolution brought so many benefits, the Evergreen Revolution
would bring all those in perpetuity. The word play has actually been quite successful.
Political leaders and policymakers carry over the positive association with the
Green Revolution to the Evergreen one. If the earlier version brought such
benefits, the newer one (more precise, with greater possibilities, as the
industry says) would surely bring even greater benefits to the farmers and the
poor. Conveniently left out of this portrayal are the essential and crucial
differences between the two 'revolutions'.

The
Green Revolution (GR) was a publicly owned technology, belonging to the people.
The research was conducted in public sector universities and research
institutions with public money and created public goods to which everyone had
access. There were no Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), no patents vested in
multinational companies, no proprietary technologies or products. If there was
ownership of the GR, it was vested in the farmer. Once the seed reached the
farmers, it was theirs; they moved it where they wanted. Therefore, despite its
faults, the Green Revolution addressed farmers' needs and India's food
production showed an upward curve.

The
Evergreen Revolution is almost the exact opposite. It is a privately owned
technology. Six corporations (Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, DuPont,
Dow and BASF Plant Science) control practically the entire research and output
in the field of transgenic plants. Processes and products, including research
methodologies, are shackled in patents and the farmer has no say, let alone any
control. The technology creates only private goods that can be accessed only at
a significant cost after paying licensing fees. In the case of Bt cotton, the
only GM crop cultivated in India
so far, a bag of Mahyco-Monsanto's Bt cotton seed costs Rs. 1,600 as compared
to around Rs 400 for superior varieties produced locally.

The
seed belongs to the company, which strictly controls its movement. With the
development of the popularly termed ‘terminator’ or sterile seed technology,
the farmer is reduced to a helpless consumer, not a partner as in the case of the
GR. The Evergreen Revolution has in its 20 years, not yet produced a crop
variety that has any direct connection to hunger and nutritional needs. The
most prevalent crops remain corn, soya, cotton and canola and the dominant
traits are herbicide tolerance and insect resistance. Despite its other faults,
the Green Revolution was able to put out a number of crop varieties in a short
span of time that enabled direct yield increases, which brought immediate
benefits to farmers. That in short is the contrast between the two revolutions,
so assiduously camouflaged by the Agbiotech spinmeisters.

India had participated enthusiastically
in the Green Revolution and is on its way to equally enthusiastically embrace
the Gene Revolution or Agbiotechnology. Yet there is little debate in the
country on whether any lessons have been learnt from the Green Revolution.
There is even less debate between policymakers and other stakeholders on
whether GM crops are relevant to Indian agriculture and if so, what path we
should adopt.

There
is no consultation with the public or any sharing of information about GM
research and trials, as is done in almost all countries that are implementing
GM technology. The Department of Biotechnology has promoted research projects
randomly without any assessment of farmers' needs and the best way to fulfil
them. Civil society has been uneasy with the lack of transparency and the lack
of competence in regulatory bodies; the media is largely uninformed and
political leaders remain unaware of the direction this new and controversial
technology is taking in India
and have no say in determining what it should or should not do.

This
is not the way to adopt a new technology, especially one that comes with a
string of compulsory regulations. GM technology must follow specific prescribed
procedures and be tested stringently. What kind of GM technology should India adopt?
Should it permit GM foods or should it ban them like Europe, Africa
and many other countries have done? What should our policy be on GM food crops
and non-food crops? We must frame an intelligent policy after widespread
consultations with a range of stakeholders. The process should be inclusive and
transparent, allowing a range of expertise and insights to be brought into the
decision-making process. And we should abide by the consensus view.

The writer is the founder of a research and advocacy organisation,
Gene Campaign

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

The health impacts of these changes is not very clear, but the changes in the family of genes
related to immunity and sugar metabolism detected in these babies, now
teenagers, may put them at a greater risk to develop asthma, diabetes or
obesity.

Canadian
researchers report that the number of days an expectant mother was deprived of
electricity during Quebec's
Ice Storm (1998) predicts the epigenetic profile of her child. Scientists from
the Douglas
Mental Health University Institute andMcGill University have
detected a distinctive signature in the DNA of children born in the aftermath
of the massive Quebec
ice storm.

Five months
after the event, researchers recruited women who had been
pregnant during the disaster and assessed their degrees of hardship and
distress in a study called Project Ice
Storm. Thirteen years later, the researchers found that DNA within theT cells of 36 children showed distinctive
patterns in DNA
methylation.

The team
concluded for the first time that maternal hardship predicted the degree of
methylation of DNA in the T cells. The epigenetic signature plays a role in the
way the genes express themselves. This study is also the first to show that it
is the objective stress exposure (such as days without electricity) and not the
degree of emotional distress in pregnant women that causes long-lasting changes
in the epigenome of their babies.

About Me

Dr. Suman Sahai, who has had a distinguished scientific career in the field of genetics, is a recipient of the Padma Shri,the Borlaug Award, Outstanding Woman Achiever awards, the BirbalSahni Gold Medal and the Order of the Golden Ark .
Dr. Sahai is founder Chairperson of the Gene Campaign which is a leading research and advocacy organization, working on issues relating to food, nutrition and livelihoods. She has published extensively on science and policy issues and is a member of several national policy forums on scientific research and education, biodiversity and environment, biotechnology and bioethics as well as intellectual property rights.
Dr Sahai chaired India’s Planning Commission Task Force on ‘Agro biodiversity and Genetically Engineered Organisms’, for the XIth Plan. She was a member of the Steering Committee of the National Biodiversity Board , the Expert Committee on Biotechnology Policy and the Bioethics Committee of the Indian Council of Medical Research.She has served on the Research Advisory Committees of national scientific institutions.
Dr Sahai can be reached at www.genecampaign.org and mail@genecampaign.org